potato vacation in Hawaii !?!

Is a bear catholic? Does the pope shit in the woods?! Heck yeah I'll go to Hawaii for a work trip.  Brandon and Annabelle joined me on the trip, excited for an adventure and for pineapples. 

For two weeks  I was sent out to a oily red field covered in weeds during crappy weather while Brandon was killing it being a dad. The hotel pool was a three foot deep oasis for small kids - complete with an artificial waterfall and rock structure to jump off of. Brandon spent so much time in the pool his balls were soon saturated like two water logged raisins.  Annabelle learned how to swim so well she soon equaled Michael Phelps- but like Michael Phelps in little red ladybug lifejacket. 

They took her swimming skills into the wild and Brandon soon had her swimming to shore from the paddle board and ocean snorkeling.  She was very excited about snorkeling,  Annabelle instructed " you put your breather in your mouth then go under water and look for stuff like fish and monies". Then she'd go underwater and continue nonstop mumble talking through her snorkel.  

Not only did she learn how to swim she learned a lot about how the ocean works. Especially about how you can go potty in the ocean.  Brandon learned a lesson too. You have to specifically breakdown barney style what  "going potty in the ocean"  means to a three year old.  You are allowed to pee in the ocean. Not poop. (There was a close call at a nature preserve ).

This Christmas we bought ourselves an inflatable paddle board and brought it with so Brandon had some sort of adventure to seek out during the day. We discovered a neat canal off the ocean that went back for a ways that was filled to the brink with turtles, so thick you had to work hard not to hit them. The three of us were able to float on it together - me drinking a beer while Brandon paddled the weight of the family amongst the turtles.   

After seeking out calm shores to paddleboard on as a family, Brandon thought he'd try surfing on the paddle board. We weren't sure if the board was going to just fold in half and pop- but it actually surfed. We were taking turns paddle board surfing and engineering massive sand castles with Annabelle when a local guy came up to us and was trying to sell himself as a surf instructor. He told us we looked like natural surfers and really could benefit from lessons and pretty much could be hitting the pipelines at Waimea Beach after a few pointers. He was a pretty good salesman and by the time he left we were feeling pretty inflated about our natural surfing ability. So we paddled out to the next bigger set of waves and just took turns getting completely annihilated. That next bigger set of waves picked us up and spit us out repeatedly, until we realized we probably weren't natural surfers and should just stick to the sesame street waves near shore. 

In between all the working and all the swimming we did three family jungle hikes all that had their own charm. We hiked to some world war II pillbox relics up a steep hill where Annabelle was prancing along  singing bah bah black sheep as loud as she could passing other tourists  as they were gasping for air. We completed the rainiest hiking loop of our life in the jungle-  where the road actually started to flood midway through. And we ended the trip  with a fun class two slab scramble which we turned around on when it got too steep for a wiggly kid. 

Annabelle had the time of her life hanging out with Daddyo, but we decided she likely won't remember much of the details.

Until next time Hawaii.